TABLE OF CONTENTS Solutions at the Speed of Business: A 2 New NCS Initiative Hunter Lovins introduces NCS’ exciting web-based learning tool, designed to help small businesses implement climate protection measures. State of Green Business 4 Jeff Hohensee, Natural Capitalism’s CEO, on light green versus authentic sustainability. Keeping Clean and Being Green 5 Marvin Klein, President of PortionPac, describes how his work has driven PortionPac to its place as an industry leader in sustainability. He gives ideas for smart cleaning that could apply to the largest industrial plant or your home. Presidio Corner 6 Toby Russell, Hunter’s teaching assistant at Presidio School of Management, reflects on the popular program that teaches sustainability to business school students. NCS Tackles Travel 7 Research Associate Steve Mannhard reports on efforts to decrease our footprint. Making the Best of Your Stimulus Check 8 Your $600 can go a lot further than you might think. Going Down the Road with Hunter Lovins 8 Hunter’s travels since November. Take Action Calendar 18 Find out where NCS staff will be in the near future. Take Action Video 19 Watch “required” videos on the latest climate news by Dr. John Holdren Solutions at the Speed of Business: A New NCS Initiative Hunter Lovins introduces NCS’ exciting web-based learning tool, designed to help small businesses implement climate protection measures. Climate change may be the most serious problem ever to face humankind. Scientists say we need to reduce carbon emissions by at least 80 percent in the next 50 years. Big companies like DuPont, Wal-Mart and Motorola are starting to address the issue by voluntarily cutting their own emissions and pressuring their supply chains to cut emissions further Small businesses are largely absent from the solution side of the equation, however. This is a serious emission, as their contribution to the problem is huge. In the United States, 23 million small companies produce half the non-farm gross national product and employ over half the workforce. The Energy Information Administration estimates that in 2005, small businesses accounted for 48 percent of electricity use. Assuming their carbon output reflects that percentage, small businesses create more than 3,590 million metric tons of carbon emissions per year. To date, no one has figured a way to enable smaller companies to implement climate protection. Sending energy savings experts door-to-door, business-by-business, city-by-city, simply costs too much. NCS introduces a tool to hurdle this barrier. We have a tool that will reach small businesses, speaks their language and works at their speed. Building on the successful Climate Protection Manual for Cities (www.climatemanual.org) NCS is producing Solutions at the Speed of Business (Solutions). Based on conversations with business people about the information they needed, the Climate Protection Manual for Small Business manual collects best practice examples from companies across the United States. This content is gathered, and will be released for free on our website, but it is also now being incorporated into a dynamic web-based learning tool that will enable busy people to access what they need, on their own time, at their own speed. To produce the web-based tool, NCS has partnered with CogBooks (www.cogbooks.com) a professional web-based learning company. Business people are increasingly turning to the web for the information they need to run their companies; they purchase affordable training materials and use them to increase their profits. The average merchant or office- dweller doesn’t have time to attend a seminar or read a manual. This group needs information delivered in the form that they are used to: web-based tutorials. 2 NCS is committed is to have 50,000 businesses signed up in three years—cutting carbon emissions by 1.2 million metric tons. The Solutions tool will give owners and operators of small businesses a step-by-step program they can implement by themselves to cut their use of energy, cut their emissions of carbon and increase their profits. The online suite of services will include: • Tools to create a step-by-step action plan. • Templates on how to communicate with employees, stakeholders and contractors about the plan and its value. • Tools to track the business’ progress. • Local funding resources for climate protection. • Background information on climate change and its impacts. Solutions will include an online community for sharing ideas, successes and questions. Users will be able to access the experts at NCS for general Internet and phone support if they have technical or content questions. The tool can enable us to track how much users achieve in reduction of energy and costs, and the extent to which they implement climate protection measures. The goal is to have the tool working in 50,000 businesses in three years. Reducing energy use by 20 percent in these businesses would save approximately 1.2 million metric tons of carbon. Addressing the challenge of climate change is truly urgent. We used to think we had 10 years to reduce the emissions of carbon and to begin to level things out. Now scientists tell us we have perhaps two years—if that. We simply must get the information out about profitable climate solutions to every sector of society. You can hear Hunter speak about Solutions at the Speed of Business in a six-minute piece on You Tube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oTj6jIedNw). We are developing the tool in the absence of dedicated funding because we believe getting it out is urgent, but are continuing to seek support to underwrite the tool. If you wish to help us fund the creation of this tool, please contact us today. 3 The State of Green Business Jeff Hohensee, Natural Capitalism’s CEO, on light green versus authentic sustainability. During 2008, green has become corporate America’s favorite color. After Hunter’s years of arguing that “green” enhances both environmental stewardship and profitability, she now has a growing chorus supplying the hard numbers to prove her thesis. Over the past year, reports from the Economist Intelligence Unit, Goldman Sachs, Sustainable Asset Management and many others have shown that the companies that are leading the sustainability revolution have better financial performance, including higher stock value. The Goldman Sachs Report found that companies that are leaders in environmental, social and good governance policies, have outperformed the MSCI world index of stocks by 25 percent since 2005; 72 percent of the companies on the list outperformed industry peers. To read the entire report, go to the Full Length Goldman Sachs Report. What these studies show is that the “light green” measures favored by companies over the past decades are no longer sufficient. As NCS works to support sustainable business solutions, we have found that companies are following two distinctly different approaches. In our opinion, only one will deliver enduring value. The other may confer short-term gains, but will not underpin long-term competitive advantage. Simply turning off computers will save around half a million dollars. Many organizations are “doing sustainability,” but not yet truly “becoming sustainable.” They are cherry-picking some of the savings that can be achieved by reducing energy use, improving the reliability of their supply chains, and reducing the amount of materials they use. The results can be amazing—while working with one of our client companies, we noticed that they were leaving their computers on all of the time, letting them go into stand-by or sleep mode instead of powering them off. We helped them to change their IT policy so that employees power down their computers whenever the computers are not being used. Just implementing this one change will save around half a million dollars per year, with no investment. This simple efficiency practice will cut their costs and liabilities, and increase their shareholder value. Obviously, this is just good business practice and is a great step towards becoming sustainable, but it is only the first step. The great news is that we also can report a growing number of corporate leaders taking a much more comprehensive approach to sustainability. They are looking beyond efficiency and embracing sustainability as a core driver in how they operate their business, not just a short-term tactic. They are redesigning their products and processes using approaches like biomimicry. This is not only saving them money, but is also preparing their businesses to be the first to the future in their respective industries. 4 NCS has worked with PortionPac Chemical Corporation since 2005. The company was looking for a way to integrate sustainability across its entire operations. The Helix model, developed by NCS (www.natcapsolutions.org), helped PortionPac to do a comprehensive review of their business and develop more sustainable practices across different functions of the company. This has prepared their company to thrive in this time of increased costs of natural resources and higher standards for health and safety. Keeping Clean and Being Green NCS asked Marvin Klein, President of PortionPac, to describe how his work has driven PortionPac to its place as an industry leader in sustainability. Below, Marvin provides some ideas for smart cleaning that could apply to the largest industrial plant or your very own home. 1. Remember you are cleaning for your health. PortionPac founder, Syd Weisberg, believed that the cleaning industry has done almost as much for public health as the medical profession. You need a product that works. 2. Eliminate redundant products. Chances are you have two or three times as many cleaning products as you need. If you want to protect the environment and your pocket book, this is an easy step.